there youre wrong torulf. PimpMeHappy, me and other lasting members habe formed a group outside of BP and are communicating directly over phone and private chatts forming a group of cooperating traders and all of us since then are much less active on babypips.
Well, many thanks, Eddie (actually I think that’s more true of yourself than it is of me!) …
But the fact is that I’m getting infractions just for using smilies(!), while I can’t even get an answer [B]at all[/B] from the staff about why “reports” (regarding someone else who doesn’t participate in the forum in any way other than compiling his own 172-page thread [U]absolutely packed with links to his commercial signal service, in clear-cut breach of the forum’s current rules[/U]) are persistently ignored.
That sends a fairly unmistakable message about what sort of members they actually value here, doesn’t it?
It’s not attributable to any kind of “simple misunderstanding”, or other kind of innocent explanation, either: this has going on for [I]months and months[/I] (while the forum’s traffic and participation have been steadily and consistently declining), and they’ve had every opportunity - to put it mildly - to explain it. Heaven knows I’ve asked repeatedly enough.
I [B][U]do[/U][/B] respect their right to run their forum however they wish to.
But I also wish they’d have the decency to answer a perfectly simple and entirely reasonable question.
I don’t want to come across as “Little Miss Sense-of-Entitlement”, here, but I feel like they owe me that much, after all I’ve contributed here.
Other members, if interested, can make up their own minds about these situations.
And [I]many[/I], of course, have been doing exactly that - hence the gradual drop-off in traffic/participation, here.
I may not even get a [I]choice[/I] about whether to leave, anyway: if the infractions are anything to go by, they’ll end up banning me and retaining the persistent spammer (as is their right, of course, if that’s really what they want).
For the Mods.
The above quote was made by French soccer player, famous in the UK for playing in the English soccer league and even more famous for jumping into the terraces and doing a kung fu on a guy who had been shouting some obscenities.
For reference, his name is Eric Cantona, he played for Man Utd.
He uttered the phrase at the subsequent press conference, around 1995, over 20 years before the American actor who repeated it. The phrase is described as “gnomic” meaning short, difficult to understand but wise".
The mod’s action in removing the smiley falls down on the last adjective.
Btw, Lexy, I haven’t a clue who the American actor is, probably just like the US guys haven’t a clue who Eric Cantona is - and here is that smiley 
dont take it too serious Lexy.
A month ago i aswell got my first infraction because i dared to say $ex in a post. if i had a smiley in that post i maybe would have got banned immediately 
Wrong problem is that i mostly have right …
So you you open a little boy club without me , that is insulting
What part of my text is wrong
You friend pipmehappy have been quiet for a periode i guess the market have cleaned him out …
Hundreds of analyses ,5000 post reading about trading x hour every day and not figure out that after brexit
will GBP weakness …what shame …
Look out bro, we’re starting to agree on things!!!
I didn’t get an invite either, so, so peaved about that! Since we’re quoting, guess birds of a feather do stick together.
But I think the following is more relevant
Give me strength to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
There is a real danger in doing this. Be like deputizing vigilantes in the wild west(no disrespect to Lexy or Manx). You have to remember bro, this is a commercial site. It’s here to generate revenue. It’s certainly not here to stroke the ego’s of a selected few. You participate or you move on. One thing is for certain, this isn’t the same place as it was 4 years ago when I joined. Yet it hasn’t change. As you will be well aware, no organization can survive unless it changes to met the needs of the current marketplace. It’s up to the owners to decide what form they wish the beast to take.
problem is that u think u got right 
I don’t really agree with you here, Bob. A moderator’s work is authorised by the site officials and is defined and confined by a given set of rules. They cannot act outside of their given jurisdiction.
Whereas a vigilante is someone who takes the law into their own hands because they feel the authorities are not doing what they should - which often appears on this site in the form of derogatory and sarcastic responses to postings that the vigilante personally considers in some way inappropriate:
Wikipedia: ““Vigilante justice” is often rationalized by the concept that proper legal forms of criminal punishment are either nonexistent, insufficient, or inefficient. [B]Vigilantes normally see the government as ineffective in enforcing the law[/B]; such individuals often claim to justify their actions as a fulfillment of the wishes of the community.”
I believe that visible moderators helps in promoting quality on a forum, which in turn surely leads to better commercial revenues. I certainly do not see moderating as an ego stimulus, in fact quite the opposite. It must be a thankless and mind-destroying task to have a duty to read through all the mundane trivia to seek out the scams and the infringements. For the record, I have never indicated that I would like that role, nor would I ever take on that kind of responsibility. I am (was) here purely due to an interest in trading and a desire to share experiences with other like-minded professionals and Newbies.
Since that kind of trading talk has diminished noticeably here, and since I agree fully with your conclusion, I have decided to return to my trading environment and quit this world of forum speak. I don’t come here any more, and I am only responding here because my name was mentioned and this is the only thread to which I still had an e-mail alert.
I do wish you guys well and hope that things improve. As Speedbump, I’m sure, would also say, people come, people go, and the site will just keep on rolling its way forward. The owners will respond when and where they see a need to do so - and if they don’t then live with it or leave…
Sincere good wishes with the boxes and your own recovery plans!
Don’t fee to sorry for them bro! With revenue between $200 - $300 000 a year it’s not that thankless a job. Like most things forex, it’s easier and far more profitable to sell “education” than trade.
But when three “more reputable” members can’t even joke about PM’s then it moves to censorship. And when vomit like this 301 Moved Permanently can spew forth their message then it’s all about the revenue.
As a newbie 4 years ago, BP’s seems the ducks nutz and the answer to a new traders prayers. Reality is
that is all marketing and eventually will contaminate ones trading. So like yourself and many others recently, it’s time to take a step back and let the new kids on the block take control.
Boxes rule!!!
All the best to you my friend
Babypips, not bad for a small newspaper company run out of Richmond.
To me, it’s mostly a matter of common decency and politeness, and just having enough respect for your customers (or at least pretending to) to be willing to answer a longstanding, contributing member’s perfectly legitimate and reasonable question about the way the forum’s run.
[b]This thread[/b] (and it’s not the only one, but I’m just taking it as an example because there are 172 pages of it) is full of links to a [I]commercial signal-service[/I] listed and paid for through “Zulutrade”.
I just want to know why the moderators ignore all the reports about such a clearcut and persistent breach of their own rules.
That’s what I started the thread for.
My “reports” on that thread are ignored, the moderators don’t respond to questions included with reports, they don’t answer the question when asked by private message, the administrator doesn’t reply about it, they don’t respond to a thread asking them publicly (though they read it enough to give its OP an infraction).
I’ve been asking perfectly politely for a [B][U]year[/U][/B], now, without ever receiving a better answer than - to quote - “there are some issues that need thorough discussion”.
Whether I get another infraction for saying so, or not, I think that’s downright insulting.
pfffff, & the rest!
If they’re only churning over 3-400k off this gig after all this time they’re doing something radically wrong. There are sites out there of a similar ilk flipping $2-3mio with less than 2 yrs under their belt.
Attract
Click
Earn
Repeat…….
In the bowels of a mass participation arena with money/greed at its core, what type of activity is likely to attract, intrigue & hold large groups of impressionable individuals long enough to entice them back on a regular basis until the penny finally drops & they either wise up or lose their shirts?
- boring, mundane, run-of-the-mill, sensible advice from street smart clued up punters…or
- jazzy, get-rich-quick promises from snake oil salesmen, slick fast talking empty vessel gurus & naïve, gullible fanboys who defend & promote them till the cows come home?
Ply them with colourful fairy tales & visions of yellow brick roads, guide them in the direction of all the waiting broker shops, rinse & repeat.
Gimme the money honey!
Thanks for this - I do take your point, Speed Bump.
I understand that principle, but don’t know enough about this kind of business to tell to what it extent it applies here. I suspect it does, at least to some extent, but I also think there must be counter-examples, when you look at the essentially unmoderated forums in this industry which are consistently losing their traffic and participation and advertising, and at the well moderated ones which are certainly gaining it - and those are parameters pretty easily monitored by anyone interested.
I appreciate that the revenue-stream in this kind of business comes from selling advertising. My understanding was that advertising income is likely to be directly or indirectly proportional to verified traffic, and that in the case of a forum, that’s clearly going to depend on active members and participation. One would think that in those cases, policies that so consistently drive away the members and traffic would be less than ideal.
In any case, if the forum’s staff were willing to explain their position on those grounds, even if only privately (and they’ve had every chance) and even if not in those exact words, as I mentioned above [I]I’d have accepted that[/I]. But trying to fob off a loyal, longstanding and contributing member, persistently, for a year, with no more adequate response than an eventual “there are some issues that need thorough discussion” (and then on top of it dole out an infraction for having the temerity eventually to ask in public, all other avenues having failed!), in my view, is just [b][u]plain rude[/U][/B].
And that’s no way to keep members, either … and no reputation to acquire [I]so unnecessarily[/I].
Hello Lexy,
After reviewing your post, it was deemed inappropriate because of the emoticon used. Contrary to what you have said, it was not a default smiley emoticon but an add-on: a raised middle finger. We agree that you have used normal emoticons on your previous posts. However, this emoticon was not one of them. Putting a smiley with the middle finger up does not make it appropriate and normal.
All reported posts are reviewed by moderators. When reports are deemed questionable for whatever reason, multiple moderators review the reported post. Actions are taken on the posts found in violation of our rules and regulations, but keep in mind, we try to reply to all reported posts that do not violate our rules and regulations, where we take no action, but we don’t guarantee it.
When it comes to signal providers with a framework like Zulutrade, they are a grey area for us. With the Zulutrade model, signal providers are not directly compensated by a user, and in the past we felt that was okay because it can go either way: a signal provider could be giving away amazing ideas for free or they can be terrible.
And keep in mind that past performance isn’t indicative of future results: a good trader can go on a bad run and a bad trader could turn into a good one. It’s impossible to separate the future good traders from the bad, but it is a free market and it should easily separate those who are helpful from those are not.
We feel the best stance to take for a global community of thousands of members, with different personal situations and different levels of personal risk tolerance is to not take away their options and choices of how they want to engage the markets. And hopefully, a user takes the time to get educated and understands that there is risk in trading, and that they take responsibility for whatever type of risk they engage in, whether it’s following another forum member, a signal provider, or their own trading ideas.
Of course, we do recognize the potential conflict of interest with the Zulutrade model, and that there are characters who are not capable and/or do not care about putting out good trade ideas and managing risk well. With this, the team has decided that moving forward, we won’t be allowing links to commercial signal-services such as Zulutrade. Members who value services like Zulutrade will have to look somewhere else. Threads by existing Zulutrade users will be closed and new threads will not be allowed, until we have in place a system that identifies and separates those threads from other non-commerical threads.
Hopefully that answers some of questions. Feel free to comment further below
I was also surprised to see that the thread mentioned on page 1 had survived for so long. However what surprised me was the 52% drawdown recorded. What exactly is needed to invalidate this form of ‘advice’?
In general it is important to be aware that among the entities advertising here there will be a fair amount of scammers. At the same time it may be frowned upon to draw attention to something that may be of value to the forum members if it involves a commercial enterprise that is not paying to be here. Understandable I guess for a commercial site. As usual with stuff on the net or in life in general you need to be smart when evaluating what you read or hear.
Thanks for your reply, Nica.
I won’t allow the fact that I’ve waited a year for a reply on this issue (and eventually got one only by all-but-demanding it in public) to prevent my saying how welcome it is: I think the forum’s made a good decision, there; I’m grateful for it and others will be, too.
Thank you.
There are only two small points on which I wish to respond further.
The first relates to the smiley.
I [B][U]didn’t[/U][/B] say it was a “default” smiley.
On the contrary, I actually specified that it was from the Clicksmilies site (and therefore clearly an add-on).
So it’s not actually “contrary to what I said” at all.
[B][U]Not[/U][/B] so, Nica: not a “raised middle finger”. (Surely you know me better than to imagine that?).
It was a little grinning smiley of someone pointing upwards (as in “to a post above, to which I referred”!) with each hand.
Not only was it [I]entirely innocent[/I], but it was also [U]one I’ve posted here before without giving any offence to anyone[/U].
If you’d like me to, I’m happy to send it to you in a private message [I]so that you can see for yourself[/I] (and I’m sure you’ll be able to confirm with the moderator concerned, who sent me the “warning”, that I’m sending you the same one).
Please let me know either here or privately, if you’d like me to do that.
But either way, I’m requesting, in the circumstances, that the infraction should formally be set aside, please. It was [I]absolutely[/I] unwarranted.
My feeling at the time was (and - I’ll be honest, here - still [U]is[/U]) that I was being given a warning because I’m seen as a thorn in the moderators’ flesh, by the fact that I continue to report spam, to send messages about it when my reports are ignored, and to start threads like this when all else fails.
I have an additional reason for thinking that, too: an entirely innocent, off-topic thread I started and to which I was the principle contributor (the “art-work” thread, in this section of the forum), [B]which Pipstradamus himself gave me permission to post[/B] when I took the trouble to ask before starting it, was removed, thus further enhancing the very strong and increasing impression that the forum was [U]continuing to delete my posts while leaving those of spammers on the board[/U]. [I]We both know that I’m also far from the first member to make this observation[/I]. Given the large number of previous occasions on which Pipstradamus has acknowledged how unfortunate and regrettable that has been, I’m sure you can appreciate how disappointing it is when the same things happen over and over again, can’t you, Nica?
I sent a private message to Pipstradamus asking (perfectly politely, needless to say) why the thread he himself had given me permission to post had disappeared.
My message was ignored, with no acknowledgement - let alone a reply.
I’m used to that: sadly, it’s a very common staff (lack of) response to private messages. But I’m still complaining about it, as you see. And I’ll continue to, as well, if the forum continues to treat its longstanding contributors in that way. Just so we’re all clear about that.
So, the “TLDR version”: since you’ve now kindly welcomed further feedback from me, this is my further feedback: first, congratulations on and thanks for your eventual decision to enforce the rules; secondly, please rescind the unjustified infraction I was given; thirdly, please let me know why my art-work thread has been removed, and re-instate it. Thank you very much in advance,
Lexy
Hi Lexy,
The thread you started in the Melting Pot section is still there. The last post was in October 2015.
http://forums.babypips.com/the-melting-pot/75482-babypips-artists.html
Thanks,
Jess
Thank you, Jess. 
(It wasn’t, a week ago - or at least it didn’t appear on the list of threads started by me, nor on the list of threads with the word “Artists” in the title, on using the search function.)
Nica,
As I mentiooned above, many of us were pleased and relieved by your eventual reply, on this subject. But we’re now wondering why that hasn’t happened yet, and even the thread linked to in this thread’s first post hasn’t yet been closed.
Sorry if I apear “demanding”, but it takes only two seconds to close a thread, and I’m now asking [I][U]five days[/U][/I] after your assurance on this point. 
Lexy